Creative Memory

Creative thought could not exist without memory. Though creativity is usually thought of as a spontaneous original response, the ability to remember one’s past experience and use it as a springboard for new potentials is necessary. Without a clear understanding of what is already known, how could you know that you’d discovered something unknown? This is especially the case in problem solving. Creative artistic inspiration draws more on aesthetic considerations. Yet both are dependent upon the remembrance of known experience as a platform for new creations.

Short-term memory is housed in the hippocampus. This organ, extending from the midbrain hypothalamus like a horseshoe, is considered the temporary storage unit for short-term memory and a vehicle for long-term memory. Along with the amygdala, the hippocampus also passes on certain memories to the cerebral cortex for long term storage. The amygdala appears to play a large role in the memory of emotional experience. Research indicates that long-term memories are not stored in one specific place, but are stored throughout the brain as associative images. The best research done to date on this has been by Karl Pribram who believes that the brain acts as a holographic instrument able to take bits of information and construct the whole from these fragments of memory.

Source: Enchanted Mind